Now, I’ll be the first to say, that sometimes leaders are abdominal no-men whose instinctive, gut-level response is to say no instead of yes to just about everything.  We’ve all been on the receiving end of abdominal no-men, but that still doesn’t mean good leadership means only/always saying yes.  While God is calling us to be highly permissional leaders who empower and release people, we still have a God-given responsibility to say no when needed.

So, when does no need to be said by a leader?  When the idea, even a great idea doesn’t directly relate to the vision and mission of the church.  Sometimes it may be a matter of wrong timing, but sometimes it’s just a great idea that doesn’t strategically advance what God is building in that church.

Remember that the elder team in the local church has the responsibility before God to exercise Biblical government.  Government means that they determine doctrine, discipline, and the direction of the church.  When leaders perceive that a great idea doesn’t fulfill God’s direction for the church, they must say no to that idea.  However, don’t confuse no to your idea with the no of personal rejection.

Perhaps nothing reveals our hearts faster than how we respond to a no from leadership! Even in highly permissional churches, leaders are responsible to say no to ideas that they perceive will not directly fulfill the direction of Christ for their church!  I expect that this blog will stir up some visceral responses…how do you handle it when a leader says no?

I think that it is easy to miss the disciple-making significance of the act of baptism.  Water baptism demonstrates what may be the most powerful core truth of Biblical Christianity; namely, that this life is about a total identification with Jesus Christ so that the end product is that I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  When I believed in Jesus’ bloody death on the cross, I completely died with Christ, I was buried with Christ, and now I am resurrected with Christ.  That identification was so complete that from now on, to live is Christ! 

You see, water baptism is not just an obedient action to Christ’s commandment, it is the ultimate statement of what I am now in Jesus Christ.  Henceforth, my life is no longer my own—my life is not about me any longer at all—my life is simply about Jesus Christ.  That is the core truth and message of water baptism and why it is central to making a disciple.  It also logically and reasonably follows that from now on I live my life to obediently do the will of Christ.

Christianity is a complete identification with Jesus Christ, one that is so deep and profound that I no longer live, but Christ lives in and through me!  Making disciples must start with this clear understanding or our obedience to Christ will always be incomplete!

Paul teaches that there really are two kinds of human beings on the earth now: the old people who are in Adam—and we all are born to this world in Adam—and the New Creation people who are in Christ.  Those who are born again of the Holy Spirit are now no longer in Adam, they are in Christ!  When you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ you are now “in” Christ.

As Adam was the head and representative of the old humanity; so Christ is the head and representative of the new humanity.  In Adam brought us sin, disobedience, condemnation and death.  In Christ brought us righteousness, obedience to God, acquittal, life, and a New Creation.

Those who are in Adam belong to the old age with it’s bondage to sin and death and is passing away; but those who are in Christ belong to the “real” new age of God’s Kingdom with all of it’s righteousness and life.

So, to be a New Creation in Christ means being a participant in a new age and realm of God’s salvation–experiencing now a piece of all that heaven will ultimately swallow the entire universe with!  If we are in Christ, we really are an entirely new created order of things.  We are the first fruits of all of the newness of heaven that will ultimately overtake the entire created universe.  To be in Christ points to what is to come in Ephesians 2:10b, “to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

Just as consumer confidence affects consumer spending, it is consumer confidence that influences giving in the local church! It might be better to say that the engine that enables the church to advance, is very much driven by the believer’s confidence and its affect on giving!

When Christians allow the economic or political uncertainty around them to create fear, then the believer will feel pressure to sit on their money and limit their giving.  In an environment of fear, we tend to hold on tightly to our resources.  But the real question we face is, “Where is our consumer confidence located?”  If we allow our consumer/believer confidence to get infected with fear because of the shifting economic and political climate, then we will tend to withhold or limit our giving to the Lord’s work.  If, however, our believer confidence is in God as our real source and provider, then our believer confidence will result in generous, obedient giving, regardless of the climate.

Remember, if you allow your believer/consumer confidence to get eroded by fear, you will hold back on your giving. The result is a dangerous economic ‘slow down’ of the advance of God’s Kingdom  through the work of His Church!  Your consumer (believer) confidence is a major key to the church’s ability to fulfill the Great Commission.  Keep your eyes on the King and His Kingdom and your believer confidence will remain high as well!

From the moment I received Christ Jesus as Lord, life ceased to be about me any more.  From now on, “For to me, to live is Christ…” (Philippians 1:21).  This is much more than just a life choice on my part (I’m now living for Christ) it is a statement of the strong spiritual reality of the Christian experience. When I received Christ as Lord of my life, I so completely identified with Christ and immersed my life into Christ that “I” simply am out of the equation!  Paul says it this way, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).  Paul goes on to say, “And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:15).

This truth is revolutionary and simply defines the Christian experience from here on out.  The implications of this are enormous.  In fact, they are so big that they change most of what we see happening in the church world around us.  Think about it this way:  if the Christian life is simply not about me and only about Jesus Christ, then it changes the way I view the worship leader’s choice of songs.  If it is about me, then my preference in worship songs becomes the issue.  If “I” am not the issue, then my preferences aren’t even in the equation—after all, worship is not for me or about me, it is only for Jesus and to Jesus!  That perspective takes my preferences out of the equation and I am now able to take each song presented by the worship leader and re-present it to and for the King, exclusively! I will give more implications of this defining-issue truth in my next blog.

The idea that we are to “fix our eyes” on Jesus is a very intense and exclusive phrase in the language of the New Testament.  It means that we are to “strictly look away from something in order to give attention to one thing, at the exclusion of all else.”  It means, “to look with undivided attention” at Jesus.

In effect, the writer of Hebrews is telling us to get a ruthlessly narrow focus in our lives– to look away from all other things in order to give our undivided attention to Jesus Christ.  Since Jesus is the beginning and end of all things Christian, it only makes sense that He always remains the exclusive vision of our lives!  Look away from everything else…stop being distracted by lesser things!  Fix your undivided attention, affection, and devotion on to Jesus!  Let nothing take your eyes off of him for even a moment!

Einstein was right when he said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” So why do we think that doing the same approaches to church over and over will suddenly produce  different results?  Probably for a mix of reasons:

1. Perhaps someone convinced us that what we’re doing should work for us, and so we just keep doing the same thing expecting better results.  What adds to the insanity is that we might have seen it work in a different place, and so the assumption is that it should work here too!

2.  Perhaps what we’re doing used to work for us, and so it makes sense to us that we just must be doing something wrong or it would work for us once again.  What further clutters our thinking is that we might be able to point out how our model (that used to work for us) is now working down the street, and so it’s perplexing to us why it doesn’t work now for us!

3.  Perhaps there’s the struggle because what we’re doing is the thing we’ve always done! On some level our methodology has become part of the history that defines us–our methods have become enshrined and are on some level, sacred to us. Regardless, it is the human tendency to hold on to the familiar thing in our lives, even if the familiar thing no longer works for us.

4. Perhaps we experienced a negative backlash when we tried something different.  As a result there were complaints from the constituency, withdrawal of financial support, and an outcry of resistance to change.  The point is that people can make it too painful to make the change and we are pressured to revert back to what we’ve always done, with the same miserable results.

5. Perhaps we are just stuck doing what we’ve always done because we just can’t see a better alternative.  Maybe we’ve just not seen a better model that makes sense to us, so we have nothing different to go to!

So what happens to you when you keep doing the same thing with the same poor results?  After awhile it can demoralize, dismantle, and discourage you to the point of just wanting to give up!   Does this describe you or your ministry?  You’re not alone!  Many of us are asking some very hard questions about church right now and we are not convinced that the models we’ve seen are really the Church that God has in mind.  What are your thoughts…I’d love to hear what you are thinking!

We could say that God (though omnipresent) has chosen to contain Himself and set up His address inside of fragile human beings. This is the truth about what we carry inside of us—it’s just easy to miss because our outsides are just so…distracting! In many ways we could say that the looks of a Christian are quite deceiving—what we see on the outside is not a fair representation of what we really are—we carry the transcendent glory of God Himself within us! We are just simply not what we appear to be. So how do we get past the distraction of the clay pot to see the glory within? It is really a matter of getting heaven’s perspective of things!

While most of us pray for heaven to invade earth, many don’t pray for a revelation of what heaven has already deposited within us. When heaven invades the earth, it brings three things: God’s presence, God’s power, and God’s perspective. At the core of heaven’s perspective is the revelation to see what God is doing and has already done in the lives of His precious people. Heaven’s perspective is that, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). Heaven’s perspective is that the great mystery now revealed is, “Christ in me, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). Heaven’s perspective is that we are individual carriers of Jesus Christ Himself within (see 1 Cor. 6:19). The ‘big’ perspective of heaven is that the fullness of Jesus Christ is already present and resident in His Church. It takes heaven’s perspective to actually believe that and see that, and it takes heaven’s revelation to release that in the now!

My problem is that I get stumbled and distracted by the clay pot humanity I see—human weakness, ugliness, imperfection, and commonness. But as Paul says, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh” (2 Cor. 5:16a). From now on we must learn to only look at and consider people from a heavenly or spiritual perspective. We must intentionally look past the fleshly clay pot to see the brilliant deposit of Christ that is the real person—after all, they no longer live, but Christ lives within them! We must pray for the “spirit of wisdom and revelation” (Eph. 1:1) to see the real inheritance of Christ that each person carries. Then, we must be courageously willing to say yes to what we see in people and do everything we can to fully empower what Christ has designed them to be.

Let’s all pray for more of heaven’s perspective and look past each other’s cracked pots to heaven’s contents within. Only then will we see people and a glorious Church that reflects His already present fullness on the earth!

Circumstances are a lot like the mattress on your bed:  if you are under the mattress, you will suffocate; but if you can get on top of the mattress, you can enjoy some rest! And one of the key things that helps us get on top of the mattress of difficult life-circumstances is our attitude in life!

Airplanes have something called an attitude indicator or artificial horizon which is an instrument used to tell the pilot the orientation of the aircraft in relationship to the earth.  Attitude is the term that refers to the relative position of the nose of the aircraft to the horizon. If the horizon is straight out in front of you and you pull back on the yoke of the plane slightly one degree up angle, you have an upward attitude. And with continued forward movement, you will gain altitude, and continue to go higher and higher until you change the attitude. The opposite holds just as true. With the nose of the plane pointed even slightly down, you lose altitude. You will continue to descend until you have a change of attitude.  A downward attitude lowers your altitude; and an upward attitude raises your altitude.  And so, your attitude determines your altitude!

In a similar way in your life and my life, our attitude really determines our altitude—if we have an upward attitude, as we keep moving forward, our altitude in life will climb.  If we have a downward attitude, our altitude will go down to crash and burn! In life, attitude determines our altitude!  So where you are right now in life is largely determined on whether you are nose up or nose down!

The Bible lets us which way our nose in life needs to be directed on the attitude indicator…in Colossians 3:1-2, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek  the things that are above, where Christ is,  seated at the right hand of God.  2  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” (ESV)

Nose up and attitude up, directed toward Christ at all times, seeking that direction—minds on the things that are above—not on the junk of earth! And here’s the deal:  when you direct your mind and your life on  the things that are above and set your minds on those things, it will raise you right out the downward tailspin of this world!